XKCD does it again
A perfect summary of my current job frustrations:
Magic Trackpad?!
Anybody who’s been subjected to me talking about my computer setup/injury prevention/productivity obsession knows that I love using a trackball* the vast majority of the time. So far the only exception I can think of is Minesweeper, but now that I’ve completely switched over to a Mac slash Apple products in general, this awesome clone of Minesweeper on the iPhone quells my bomb-defusing addiction.
ANYWAY, for me, today’s Apple announcement about the Magic Trackpad boils down to this:
(In case you’re not into input devices, that second item is a Pogo Sketch, which, along with their Inklet software, can turn trackpads into pressure-sensitive tablets. And yes, of course it comes in orange. And yes, I have a Wacom tablet, but I got it before they came out with the Touch line. Sigh.)
* The Kensington Slimblade FINALLY has programmable buttons. I was happy with it even without, but now that it can do more than just zoom/pan and control music, I wholeheartedly recommend it as a badass and very sexy trackball. I just need a wrist pad. And to stop obsessively cleaning it whenever I am meditating on something at work.
** I should probably also mention that those icons in my quick graphic up there are from a set called BlackStroke.
My husband is a Mr. Bauhaus
Typestaches! So cute!
Buy a screenprint at Old Tom Foolery
iPhoneography: Lighter embed
I’ve been fascinated by the photos people shoot and edit on their phones, so here’s one I took of a lighter embedded in asphalt down in a VA hotel parking lot the morning after our wedding. No editing done.
Object-Oriented PHP
So clear and beginner-friendly, it doesn’t need a summary from me: Object-Oriented PHP for Beginners at Tutsplus+
On regular expressions
After a lengthy (for IM) but simplified explanation of regular expressions:
Vivian: wow that’s like filipino verb conjugation
More WordPress thoughts
I know it’s common to put a lot of time, energy, and work into other people’s projects and let your own personal ones suffer. I feel like that’s what’s happened to my own blog.
First of all, I need to write more, period. Second of all, I need to modernize this theme and add some functionality! I spend so much time these days making custom CMS themes and functions and super-awesome screenshot-filled documentation and installing and configuring a ridiculous number of plugins for clients and my regular job, but I don’t seem to bother with my own.
I’m still using this ancient theme (which I don’t change because I still like it) and it’s got some old old stuff going on. The comments are especially ugly and don’t have threading enabled. I’m sure it’d be easy enough for me to fix my own stuff, but I guess it’ll have to wait until I don’t feel guilty for not focusing on open projects, including a piano recital next Wednesday. Perhaps I’ll use that Lady René font (yes, the purchase happened) to make a new header so I feel like I’ve done something. But for now, off to do a little late-night practicing that won’t bother my neighbors!
WordPress 3 Function: Sites in Dashboard menu
In the process of creating a WordPress theme for work (trying to move to WP as CMS! YAY!), I realized that the procedure for accessing the Dashboard for a site besides the one you are on can be a little obtuse and involves too much clicking. Since a huge part of the focus and reasoning behind this project is ease of use for content editors (death to Contribute), I thought it would be smart to have direct links to each applicable Dashboard within the Dashboard admin menu. In conjunction with Ozh’s wonderful Admin Drop Down Menu, I have to say that it looks pretty freaking awesome. I put this function in the theme’s functions.php file so that it applies to all network sites, but I wonder if it would be a smart thing to write and release as a plugin. So, here for you to use or rip apart – only mild testing has been done, so don’t be too mean:
/* add dashboard links to each user site underneath the Dashboard admin menu */
function sites_menu() {
global $current_user;
$sites = get_blogs_of_user( $current_user->id );
// make sure multisite is on, the current user has permissions, and has more than one site
if ( is_multisite() && current_user_can('read') && count($sites) > 1 ) {
foreach ( $sites as $site ) {
// make the URL a relative path; escape twice in case the user is in a network site (subdirectory)
$relative_admin_url = preg_replace('/http:\/\/www\.yourdomain\.com/', '../..', get_admin_url($site->userblog_id) );
add_dashboard_page( $site->blogname, $site->blogname, 'read', esc_url($relative_admin_url) );
}
}
}
add_action('admin_menu', 'sites_menu');
I’d like to deal with the URL to each Dashboard in a better way. Escaping up two directories is hacky and ugly and wouldn’t work for somebody on a subdomain multisite installation of WP3. It has to do with the way WP wants an internal page within your current wp-admin – the better way would probably be to use a function to create an options page that just redirects to the appropriate Dashboard. This would also allow me to use CSS to define icons for the drop-down version of the admin menu. I could use CSS now, but the ID that is generated is super ugly (i.e. oamsub_http:_______wp-admin – YUCK). Maybe during work hours tomorrow I’ll chew on it a little more.
If I were to make this into a plugin, I’d want/need to:
- Make it compatible with both subdomain and subdirectory multisite setups
- Only allow network activation (makes no sense to only have it activated in one, at least to me)
- Make it easy for a network admin to assign a custom icon to each site for use wherever applicable (i.e. the admin menu drop-down)
Thoughts? Hesitations? Flame war?
Modern day cliché?
Smart purchase: Corningware Mugs
It fits a decent (i.e. filling but not fattening) portion of food, vents for the microwave, AND is freezer-, fridge-, microwave-, and oven-safe. We’ve been bringing pasta with cheese on top for lunch and we can get it hot enough to completely melt the cheese while still being able to pick up the mug to eat. Should also be great for stews in the wintertime and even cold foods. I call that a win.
$10 at Amazon, but we found them for $9 at Wegman’s.